Debt Of Trust
by Garmonbozia
Summary: The boys are summoned to a burglary in progress. The thief has collapsed inside a sealed room. But there's more to this heist than meets the eye, and more, maybe, between Sherlock and the trapped criminal. - [A Pre-Fall oneshot. For sevenpercent. A little more backstory and maybe not what you're expecting.]


It's not often John hears an 'ooh'. Certainly never at home. Not, anyway, the kind of 'ooh' that expresses swooping interest, like a Clanger whistle. This unfamiliarity might go some way to explaining that perplexed look on his face, sat in frozen confusion over his breakfast, when Sherlock steps in with the phone still held to his ear. Listening, and listening and then, "_No!_ Don't do that! The moment you open that door it's all over. Don't dream of it, don't _touch_ anything. I'm on my way." He hangs up, already reaching for his coat. Still dazed, John is only watching until irritably he turns back, "Well? Coming?"

Well, it's between this and breakfast. And there was real food in the fridge this morning, so it's a real breakfast. It looks delicious, even should the chef say so himself. But then again… "_Ooh…_"

He grabs a slice of toast between his teeth and follows.

In the cab, John tries his best to make some sense of it all. "So. '_Ooh_'. What was that all about then?"

"The case. I should have thought that was patently obvious from the conversation I was having. That was _clearly_ Lestrade on the line. Who else do you know who can ruin anything with the opening of a door?"

Mrs Hudson, but he won't say that out loud. "You still haven't told me what the case is."

"Why do you do that thing?"

"What thing?"

"That thing, with your head. That little twitch. Like you're biting a particularly stubborn piece of meat off the bone. When you're asking questions or point out how hard done by you are."

"What twitch? I do _not_ twitch."

"There. You did it again."

"I do _n_- You're distracting me."

"Whatever could you mean?"

Which, although John knows far better than to keep pushing now, is interesting. Because if he has to be distracted then there is something Sherlock doesn't want to tell. Something about the case. Something about that odd, perplexing noise that started all this. That noise came out of another room and still looked unnatural on him. It was wrong, John thinks, too much like a parody of interest. An alien's impression of a human reaction. But Sherlock _never_ makes that much of an effort, not for anybody.

He'll hold his tongue for now, but he sees a forefinger, itching for nicotine, tapping against his friend's knee. An informative day ahead, if nothing else.

The scene of crime du jour is an enormous private residence in the suburbs, set among green leafy trees on its own grounds. The moment it comes into the sight, in the interests of levity, John says, "The butler did it." What's really surprising is that Sherlock smiles at the joke. Lines of communication opening, John goes on, "What's that up there?" Pointing to a glass dome, topping a turret on the end of the building, "Observatory?"

"Maybe once. Not anymore. Currently, it's a holding cell."

"What do you mean _hold-?"_

"Did it again. _Twitch_."

Lestrade meets them at the door, immediately leading off through the house. Hurrying, annoyed. And while Sherlock is too busy making his usual notes to even be civil, John feels the need to speak. "Why so aggravated?"

"Because I don't see why we can't just open the door and _remove_ her, Sherlock."

So John, apparently no more than a medium for the will and words of others, shuts up. Looks to Sherlock as if to ask what way he ought to move his lips next, in this ventriloquism.

"You _can_, certainly you can… If you want to miss everything of any real importance."

"Look, the man who owns this house, the _victim_, is a very important dignitary, so I'd be obliged if you'd watch your tongue."

"Oh, you've got _nothing_ to fear from me, Lestrade."

It's the emphasis, perhaps the intonation, but Lestrade does not look comforted. Leads on faster until they come to a stairwell at the far end of the house, curling up the inside of the tower. At the top, before he hears them approach, there is a short gentleman with a thick grey beard, leaning over his considerable girth to reach a door, and in low, coaxing tones he would seem to be speaking. "Mr Pelletier," Lestrade calls ahead. "We asked you to stay away from there, didn't we?"

"She is still unconscious," the man replies, in English far too flawless to be native. "She hears nothing."

"All the same. Allow me to introduce my associates, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson. Fellas, this is-"

But he doesn't get to complete these formalities. Sherlock, suddenly, unable to control himself, steps forward and takes the distinguished gentleman's hand. "Jean-Marc Pelletier, Lestrade. Grand patron of the Paris Modern Opera, one of the foremost art collectors alive today. A man who _needs_ no introduction, don't insult him." A man used to flattery, John thinks to himself; Pelletier swells but with satisfaction. He already believes in his own achievements. But he likes to have them recognized. Sherlock continues, unabated, "A theft, I hear. It's just awful, that a man's support of the arts can make him a target for wanton criminals."

"No theft _yet_, Mr Holmes," Pelletier answers. "The thief has yet to leave."

Between the victim and the detective inspector, the details of the case are brought out as follows.

At two-thirty this morning, according to the motion-sensor for the observatory lights, a thief, a woman, broke in to the tower room via the glass dome. Her presumed aim was to steal one of several paintings hanging there. This much is proven by two miniscule spikes in the wall either side of the door; whenever the fixtures were put up, the nails were too long and broke through to this side. Pelletier uses the room as a sort of gallery for recent purchases. By this token, the security is extremely high. An alarm was tripped, locking the door from inside and automatically calling the police-

"And what time was that call?" Sherlock interrupts to ask.

Lestrade checks his notes. "Three-sixteen a.m."

John adds, "But why not just escape through the dome, same way she got in?"

Bitterly, Pelletier hovers by the door again. "She yet might. Even her rope remains. Your British police will not climb to remove it."

Lestrade turns sheepish. "Health and safety."

"In France we would not stand for anything so ludicrous."

A little bored of having his questions brushed off, and _deeply_ paranoid about twitching, "But _why_ _hasn't she_?"

"You're not listening, John." John looks round, more than ready to take offence, to dare Sherlock to speak to him like that again, but something stops him. Pelletier is not the only one hovering by the door, watching it as though it might suddenly dissolve or at least turn to glass. "Mr Pelletier already said it; she's unconscious."

"How? She just collapsed?"

"You're the doctor, John. You tell us. Actually, yes, best go and figure that out, consult some medical texts of some sort. Place this size, undoubtedly you have a sizeable library, Mr Pelletier… Internet access at least. And Lestrade, you'll be needing to take a full statement, won't you? Please, be my guest. It can be doing this poor gentleman no good to stand staring at a great potential loss like this. Another room, a coffee, perhaps. Please."

Lestrade takes the hint immediately. In fact, he seems grateful for the support. Might have been trying to get a statement for hours. John watches Pelletier being escorted away and wouldn't doubt it; it's as though the ageing patron were welded to the door. Whatever is beyond it clearly means a lot to him, and he hates Sherlock for having him sent away. Something in that might be almost suspicious, but then, if he had anything to hide he might just have refused to go.

John lingers on behind them. "So, nice, awkward locked room mystery. Right up your street, really, isn't it?"

"Please, John. A condition that might lead a woman approximately thirty years of age and in outstanding physical health to suddenly collapse when it matters most that she just get up and run."

"Well, it could be a heart problem. Overactive adrenal gland flooding the nervous system. Could be-"

"_Go elsewhere_ and look into it. I need time up here alone."

"Me? You're sending _me_ away?" He sends Mycroft away, or Lestrade. Sally Donovan or any poor civilian with the misfortune to get in front of him, he'll send them away. But John's never suffered this particular indignity. He's been gotten rid of, but always with craft and guile. Somehow that's better, isn't it?

"Today," Sherlock concedes, "yes. Please go."

Until he said that, until he so explicitly asked, John would have been more willing to comply. It's something about 'please' that puts him so much on edge. Only with deep regret, and not quite knowing where the feeling comes from, does he turn and begin on the stairs.

Sherlock listens carefully to the footsteps going away. Gauges the very moment John is completely out of earshot and sharply turns, knocking softly but insistently on the sealed door. "Danielle!" he hisses, loudly as he dares. "Danielle, _wake up_. Shut your eyes against it and just _wake up_."

The moment the details of the case were read out to him, the answer was transparent. He could go downstairs now and give everything over to Lestrade in short, concise sentences. If only the collapsed thief would get up off the floor, shimmy back up her rope and vanish.

You see, this morning, for once in her morally-bereft life, the woman in the gallery room is not the real criminal. She is a pawn and a patsy and has been victimized on a most heinous and personal level. No, Sherlock's not going downstairs until he knows she's on her feet again. Until he knows her eyes are closed.

"Danielle, listen to my voice. I owe you this much. Forget the paintings and just listen to my voice."

He owes her this much, this once. This is why he couldn't keep John around. Talking to the 'criminal', facilitating her escape, he could have been made to understand, but not this. Not that he owes this to her. So John had to be sent away, looking for an answer Sherlock already has.

A woman in perfect health collapses in a small room full of highly desirable art. Her name is Danielle Mies. A world class thief, her only handicap is that she suffers chronically from a condition called Stendhal Syndrome. Works of art, anything of great beauty, affects her physically. It could be tears or screaming or nausea, it could be absolute emotional investment in the subject, or when absolutely overwhelmed, it could be fainting.

Sherlock knows her. On and off, he's known her for more than eight years. And they've done their share of damage to each other all down that time but in the end, when the scales are set to balance or tip, he still owes her.

* * *

Sherlock

_People change. Time and circumstances and personal beliefs mould and alter them, and people change. This much is simple fact. It would remain simple, if there were not people in any life who know a person throughout those changes. They don't forget, you see._

_For instance, say for the sake of argument I had found a new friend a bit more than two years ago. He would know me as a detective, and as someone level and detached, bearing up under the occasional nicotine craving, but no more than this. _

_But, for the sake of that same argument, say I had found a friend more than eight years ago. She would still, now, know me as a detective and level and detached, and would still laugh in her nihilistic cynical way that I expect to live so long that quitting smoking will make any difference. But she would have known me before, too. Before that change._

_The woman currently locked in Jean-Marc Pelletier's tower is that argument. She is a lot of other things, but I won't go into that. Suffice to say, she's changed too. _

_But all that time ago, when I was three months clean and relapsing, she took a full needle out of my arm in the final moments and knocked me out with a Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus. _

_Don't make me explain the meaning of terms like 'clean' and 'relapsing' and 'needle'. You already know. You don't need me to confirm it and I don't intend to. You already know. _

_When I came round, my ankle was handcuffed to the end of my bed, and she was sitting next to me with the same hypodermic balanced straight up between thumb and fingers. Saying, "You don't really want this, do you?"_

_I said, "No. Get rid of it." This was all lies and was very painful for me. So I couldn't understand why she wouldn't just do it, and was handing the damned thing back to me. "Danielle, just take it away and waste it somewhere." But her hand stayed held out to me. The needle was gleaming. There was light in streaks on the plastic of the barrel, catching in flashes as she turned it back and forth like a diamond on a jeweller's revolving pad. "As soon as I remember where your last heist was, I'm telling Lestrade." And still no response, still just the needle, there in front of me. My hands were grabbing and releasing, grabbing and releasing in the bed clothes, whether to grab the needle or Danielle's neck. I called her everything. Words that people only use when there is something cruel and desperate inside themselves and the best they can do is project it onto somebody else._

_So I took the needle off her. _

_And then, before I could do anything stupid, she presented me with the glass ashtray from the bedside cabinet. I wasted the stale cold liquid out from the barrel into it. Danielle set it down between us, lit two cigarettes and passed me on tasting of her lipstick. _

_Three drags in, when my hands were no longer seizing, a deep breath and, "Well done, love." _

_After that first cigarette she got rid of the milky mess of skag and ashes and came back. "Three months," I told her, miserable. "It should be stopping, after three months."_

"_Oh, it never stops," she murmured. Not what I wanted to hear, but the truth. She ran her fingers through my hair. Small, offhand comforts. She's good at those, when it's calculated. And when it's genuine she is very simply an affectionate person. I understood her better then than I do now. "No, gorgeous, that'll be with you the rest of your life. The only question you have to ask yourself is what made it so bad yesterday that you couldn't hold off anymore?"_

_Triggers. I'd already known about triggers but somehow, when it was my own case, when it came to me, I hadn't thought of it. The moment she mentioned it, it was perfectly clear. Sometimes that's all I takes, is somebody to make the point._

_Somebody to talk at you through a door and remind you you're still in the middle of what is now a very protracted piece of work and tell you to wake up, Danielle…_

"_Come on," she said. "Tell it to Dani. Swear to God you'll feel better. And I'm not unchaining your ankle until I know you're safe again, so-"_

"_Yes, where exactly did you get handcuffs?"_

"_That's… not what we're discussing. Don't dodge the subject."_

_So I told her. I'd met with Mycroft. And we'd been doing so much better, in those days. Almost getting on, even. We met on a fairly regular basis, and there was no business required to make that happen. _

_As I was saying, people change. That's a different story._

_Anyway, on this one occasion, all of a sudden he'd grown a human heart. That was what was so difficult. He told me, outright, out loud, in so many words, that he was proud of how well I was doing. And asked if I wouldn't consider coming down the country with him, just for a weekend, just a brief, flying visit to Mother._

"_Christ," Danielle breathed, "I can't stand my family either, but getting back on the junk to avoid it… Bit extreme." I didn't want to, but she made me laugh._

_That wasn't the first or the last time she pulled me out of a slump, or back from an edge, or away from the top of a long and inescapable spiral. Neither the first or last time she made me laugh either._

_People change. Part of my changing, part of that whole process, was thanks to Danielle Mies. I owe her this much. These are simple facts. I owe her this much, this once._

* * *

But he can't help her if she can't get off the floor. Already in his mind he can picture the scene, when they finally call someone in to remove the door, when they drag her up. He knows how she'll look, the overwhelmed, drugged face, her eyes swimming as she tries to focus on something, anything. They'll heave her along by her arms, past him, and that will be the moment when she suddenly gets her feet back beneath her, when everything snaps clear. Looking at him. Looking him right in the eye. And in that moment, surrounded by police and Pelletier, there will be no way for him to explain or even tell her that he's sorry.

They'll drag her off and miss the real crime entirely.

"Damn it, Danielle," he says, too loudly, too sharply. A little beyond control, he stops tapping at the door and, just this once, thumps it hard.

And from inside, there's a gasp.

"Shut your eyes," he fills in, very fast. "Shut them now, Danielle."

Heavy breathing in the room, something that might be 'Yes'. Then, blessedly, beautifully, a groggy croak, "Sherlock?"

Blessedly. Beautifully.

Inside, it's all coming back to her. With her eyes closed, Danielle Mies pushes up from the floor, just managing to sit up. She runs the details through her head, the boring brutal things that are not beautiful, that have no artistic merit. The room is an octagon. One wall is the door. On each of the other seven, there's a painting. That's not fair. When she cased the place yesterday there was only the one, only the important one, the one she was sent for. But last night, when she dropped down off the rope into the darkened room, when the standard motion sensor brought on the day-lights, all of a sudden there were seven. Then she was on the floor and now, here's the last voice she expected or needed to hear.

Because if they've brought in the detective, that means the cops have already been here. Which would mean she has seriously overslept.

"Sherlock?"

"This direction. Follow my voice. Don't worry, I'm alone."

On her fingertips and the toes of her leather-soled shoes, she starts to ease in his direction, silently. "Why?" she asks in return. "Why alone? I mean, why help me?"

"Shut up, keep your eyes closed and trust me again."

'Again'. That makes her smile. As if she ever really stopped. He knows too much. If she'd stopped trusting him, really stopped… well, he wouldn't be standing outside and helping, so she won't think any more about that, thank you… Anyway, she's done far more humiliating things on the job that crawl towards the disembodied voice of a private detective with her eyes closed. Not too many of them, but that's not the point.

"This is Pelletier's house_,_" she says, just to keep him talking.

"I know. We met. Foul sort of a man. But you should have known better than to come here."

"I didn't choose the job this time."

"Listen, Danielle, I can get you away, but you can't take anything with you. Especially not the one you came here for."

"Oh, get him, he's got it _all_ figured out."

"Yes, and if anybody else does too they'll question why I'm wasting time."

"I'm coming, I swear… I just can't move very well. There's a Titian in here; I'm going to have the hangover for _days_. You remember hangovers, don't you? Withdrawal? Feeling like you might just die and get it over with because you'll be happier dead, and in this world you'll never be happy again without just one more glance and-"

"_Keep- Your- Eyes- Shut._"

"Yes, sir. Quite right, sir. Do me a favour, sir, and wiggle the door handle. My hand can't quite seem to-" He does so, feels it steady as she grips it from the other side. He leans on it so it won't rattle as she pulls herself up, like dragging her up by the hand. "There she is. Thank you." Then, after a long, long pause, "You _are_ going to open this door, aren't you?"

"It's locked. From your side."

"I know that. He told me the combination is hidden behind one of the pictures. That's how I passed out. I'm not chancing it again, I just thought you might have thought of something."

"Then you didn't faint right away…"

"No, I kept a degree of control. It's quite funny, actually; most people on their way out of consciousness go into foetal or pugilist positions. I go into the recovery position. Wait; you _have_ figured out how the alarm got set off, haven't you?"

"Oh yes, I just didn't know who or if it was an accident." He laughs. She hears it and, in spite of everything, smiles back. He never laughs. She always felt it like a victory when she got it out of him. He laughs and tells her, "I'm glad it wasn't an accident…"

"So any other plans, after the door?"

"Turn your back to me. That should leave you facing the centre of the room."

"Sherlock, I'm sorry. I've got no idea where the rope is anymore. Must've bumped into a thousand times in here last night. Running about after a combination like _The Crystal_ bloody _Maze_."

"Damn… _No_! No, not damn, no, fine, everything's fine. Observatory. John said observatory, observatory, building is mid-eighteen hundreds, discovery of… Neptune, long, slow transit so the telescope aperture would have been pointing…"

Mies giggles to herself, covers her mouth to stifle it. "I see you took learning your solar system very seriously."

"Don't tell me you read that bloody blog and all. Take four steps forward." He listens to them, barely audible sounds, like silk moving on skin. "Centre of the room?"

"Just about."

"Now, your north east, advance slowly, look out for the rope." And again, he listens, not breathing, until he hears it scratch the floor as she bumps into it. Sighs it all out and, "I told you to trust me."

"Never doubted you for a second, gorgeous." Her voice is far away again, across the room. And then the rasp, a foot wrapped in rope, bracing her as she edges towards the ceiling.

Not knowing if she can hear him or not, he tells her, "I can give you six minutes," and turns towards the stairs.

She hears him alright. As she slides out onto the glass dome on her belly, slides down to the roof and then, finally, opens her eyes in daylight, it stays with her. Those last words, but the ones before them too. 'I told you to trust me'. Of course she does. Always has. He always knew how to handle her

* * *

Danielle

_The first time I met Jean Marc Pelletier ended in torture. Don't worry about it; lot of my stories end with torture. But this time it was me on the receiving end. Anyway, I got away from that, and he had to shell out some serious cash keeping the Parisian authorities off his back. French prisons are bloody awful. Not that I'd know personally or anything. I have a former friend in there though._

_This is a long story. And I have to get off this house and these grounds in six minutes. You'll forgive me if I don't exactly want to get into the twists and turns of that particular caper. _

_Best to think about something more pleasing when I'm running for my life, don't you think?_

_So this is what happened afterward. I made it back to the UK (despite some damned funny looks on the Eurotunnel) in one piece. Most of the bleeding had stopped by the time we got back to Folkestone too, so that was a plus. So I'm driving myself back to London, and all of a sudden I realize, I don't really want to go home just yet. Didn't want to go back and just sit alone in the flat. And the cattery was closed, so there'd be no picking up any furry companion until morning. _

_Don't get me wrong, there were lots of people I could have gone to. There was one man, who had been with me in Paris, and was very concerned. I would have gone to him. Everything would have been fine._

_And then I remembered another friend, who had been a shuddering junkie when I met him and wasn't anymore. Looked down at myself and the various damage and something about it just… matched. Fitted. Plus, he knew a lot more about first aid. The other gentleman is a little bit funny about wounds, skin, that kind of thing. I simply picked the option that would be the most effective and efficient for me. _

_So I landed in on Sherlock._

_He didn't mind. Worried, more than anything. And it was nice to be worried about. I know that's selfish, but it was nice not to be the one daubing antiseptic for once. Whatever parts of me I hadn't already treated or bandaged, he did it for me. It was lovely. _

_Afterward we were sharing a cigarette, and I wandered through to his living room. That's where I saw the music stand, the violin leaning in the deep windowsill. That did me more good than all the antiseptic in the world; I was there the day he decided to sell it, you see. For the same reason an addict sells anything, of course. So I bought it off him and then gifted it back. I'm not sure to this day if I should be proud of that or not. He still got high. But there it was, a full year later, intact and polished to a gleam. "You took it up again," I said to him. Smiling far too brightly, of course, looking far too much like this was my victory; I always worried he might have taken it that way. But that wasn't how I meant it. I was just so happy for him._

_I risked a glimpse of the music on the stand. Read two lines of it and had to step away, dizzy. It was music I knew well. But I'd never heard it the whole way through. I had a recording on CD and kept having to stop it so that my heart could break._

_I don't know if you know it. I don't even care. It is the final violin solo from a piece called Scheherazade. It's barely even three minutes long and I'm fairly sure in the wrong hands it could kill me._

_Sherlock caught me when I stumbled. I apologized, tried to laugh it off. He said nothing. Guided me, by the shoulders, down into an armchair, and stood right behind me. I felt him leaning back, and picking up the violin and bow. Said, "No. Really, that's not what I meant." Still no response, except that he was plucking the strings, and I could have cried, could have run, except I wasn't moving. I said again, "Please. You don't understand." Reached up behind me and took hold of his wrist, like that could stop him._

_But he did understand. And he did stop for a second or two. Just long enough to reach down and pull my hair back from my face, fingertips just trailing the line of my jaw and to say, "Trust me, and where could be the harm?"_

_In the wrong hands, like I said, it could kill me. But in his… I let go of his wrist. Leaned for just a moment into the hand on my face before it went back to take the bow. _

_It felt incredible. The same giving up, the same instinctual reactions as stealing or sex but better than either by far. Better than both. Because he meant for it to help me, to take me away out of all the pain and the terrible, terrible things I left behind in Paris and a lifetime of defeat and discouragement and being in love with somebody who wouldn't have me and the whole stupid, lost mess my life felt like that night when I was weak. _

_Because I trusted him, I was able to let him do that for me. He's played for me since. Naturally, though, it had to stop. Our professions make it difficult for us to be friends anymore. Difficult to be seen together and feel moral or safe. But trust him? I never stopped trusting him. If I had been on a mountain peak this morning, and not in a safe, windowless room, I still could have shut my eyes and walked where he told me. I never stopped trusting him. Never will, either._

* * *

John meets Sherlock at the foot of the stairs, carrying a borrowed laptop, strong and swollen with pride that he's cracked it. "There's a condition," he says, falling into step as they make their way to where Lestrade is taking Pelletier's statement. "Not medical, but psychological. If she's a superior physical specimen like you say, that's the best possible explanation for why she collapsed. She's surrounded by art up there, and there's a condition which causes illness, emotional erraticism, even fainting, when overwhelmed by beautiful things. It's called-"

But as Sherlock steps into that other open doorway he says it first, "Stendhal Syndrome." From over a fine mahogany desk, Pelletier lifts his bald and bearded head far, far too quickly. "I knew that. Mr Pelletier here knew that too. It's called Stendhal Syndrome and there's one rather celebrated thief in the world who suffers from it and you, Mr Pelletier, have crossed her before, haven't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Right. So you didn't spend six nights under house arrest in your Paris home for capturing her and tearing out a fingernail or two. We won't find that if we look up the records, will we?" Pelletier stammers and blusters, stands up from the desk with a fat, pointing finger, but there's no time here for him to speak. Without looking, only tipping his head in Lestrade's direction, "Thief's name is Mies, there's a file on her, in fact it's probably most of a filing cabinet. And you can send your man up to take the door off its hinges now if you want, I've seen all I need to see."

As Lestrade moves to go about that, he still goes no farther than the door. More is coming and he's going to be expected to explain it to the brass, so he'll have to listen. John, in the meantime, edges round to the side of the room, hoping to find himself at least in the corner of Sherlock's eye and says, "You _knew_ about the Stendhal Syndrome thing?"

But the eyes are fixed on Pelletier, and the gaze between them sharp and locked like swords. Ignoring the question entirely, Sherlock continues, "That's really rather good, if you don't mind my saying so. You know this particular thief, you know she's coming for you, so you tricked her into a room that would render her useless. I presume she came for one painting which, until last night, was the only one in the room. Then, you hung the rest yourself before she can break in, laying your trap. Don't bother denying this-"

"I don't see why I should deny it."

"You will in a minute. That's why I'm going to lay out the evidence now so you won't be able to. There are two fixtures just protruding into the hallway above, so obviously an amateur job. A man who loves his art and is paranoid about it falling and being damaged, so he wants it secure. Not to mention the plaster dust from the holes is still on the floor just outside, and the telltale fade-marks on various walls around the house where you took the other paintings from. Just out of interest, how many paintings are there in that room?"

Lestrade, before Pelletier can speak, reads, "Six," from his notes. "With an insurance total of-"

"Oh, sky-high, I'm sure," Sherlock interrupts, bored. "Of course everything's insured. Mr Pelletier is a man who takes no chances. Insurance has nothing to do with it; he voided that the moment he found out she was coming and decided not to inform the authorities. Six paintings, you said?"

Pelletier swallows on a tight throat and nods.

"Six then. Good. Fine. Six. Six paintings which are insured are hanging in that room, and what about the seventh? Why didn't you mention that to Detective Inspector Lestrade? Why didn't you get that added on to your insurance total?"

"What seventh?" Pelletier spits.

"There are six blank spaces on your walls. Entrance hall, first floor gallery of the main staircase, two in the green reception room, one in the library and another on the second floor landing. Which makes six you took down to lay your trap, and then there must be one that was already up there, one she'd seen, and wanted to steal, and which isn't insured and why would that be? And why, if the dome leaves that room so exposed to thieves, is there a lock on the inside of the door? Surely that's a gift, given they come prepared. Unless you needed to control access. That if, when you were in that room, you needed to ensure that you were undisturbed, that nobody else saw the contents. Now why would that be… why would that be? Because they might recognize what they saw. It might have been in the news lately, in the papers, all over the place, might be currently the most famous painting the world, having just recently been stolen from Tate London."

Lestrade, in fear of his job and his country when detectives go about accusing diplomats of such offences, steps in, "Now hold on a second." But only gets the bloody iPhone shoved into his hand for the trouble. One of the same news reports.

"_The Great Fall of the Reichenbach_, Turner," Sherlock fills in. "It's in that upstairs room. I have no idea why Mr Pelletier is lying, when it is about to be found as soon as the door comes off." And as Pelletier starts to fail, Sherlock snarls and is ready to deliver the last blows for the knock out, and feeling more than the usual adrenaline of the solution, of the parlour scene. It's more than simply being right, this time. "You thought you had it all, didn't you? You keep your painting and torture the thief all over again. Probably planning just to kill her, this time, for all the trouble she's given you. I bet you told her all this too. That was your mistake. Because that was one thing that really did puzzle me for a moment or two. The time lapse, between the motion-sensors recording the break-in, and the alarm going off and calling the police. There's forty-five minutes there."

Sherlock doesn't know if Pelletier is really still trying or if he's just content to keep fighting anyway, but the man puts it to him, "The system is faulty."

"No, sir, the logic is faulty. You told her everything. Told her you'd won. That annoyed her. And she said to herself, if she was going down, she might as well take you with her. Mies activated the alarm, didn't she?" And when no answer is forthcoming, he strikes the desk and asks it louder, "Didn't she?!"

The rest is a blur. First there's John, grabbing his arm, drawing him away. Then there's Lestrade being shouted into the hall, the thud of the door coming off. Someone shouting, 'She's gone'. Lestrade storming back, "Get _him_ out of here!" In all of this, only the stare between Pelletier and Sherlock himself is unbroken, until he is dragged back and stopped by Lestrade. Who asks, sternly, with distaste, "Why do I feel like I've been stitched up on this one?"

"A question for the wife, I shouldn't wonder." Sherlock, regaining himself, forces a smile, straightens his coat. Walking off with his hands in his pockets; "I want the credit for recovering the Turner, by the way. It's a beautiful piece. Do let me know if you get any more like this. Always fun to improve foreign relations." John, who had previously only been staring, now stares in confusion, and has it explained to him; "Well, the French will be grovelling for months. And I'm sure they'll be getting a few treasured works back too, when Pelletier is properly investigated."

Leaving across the lawns, and Sherlock has said nothing further about any single subject. He is, however, smiling, and this in itself has been enough to keep John quiet until now. But very suddenly all his silence and curiosity piles up, and he couldn't stay wordless if his life depended on it. "This thief, then. '_Mies'_. Pelletier's not the only one who's crossed her before, is he?"

"Very good, John. Cutting interview technique. Really, you're learning."

"And you're getting _no_ better at avoiding the question."

"Oh, there it was again."

"What?"

"On the 'no' there. You did it again. The thing. The little wince-with-a-head-shake. The twitch. You don't play poker, do you? That might be something you need to watch."

"I do _not_ twitch."

"It's not a _bad_ thing. I thought you were aware of it or I would never have pointed it out. I'm awfully sorry if I've made you self-conscious. Really, it's nothing."

"Yeah, because it doesn't exis-… You're not going to tell me _anything_ more about Mies, are you?"

"Not word one."

"Well, I'll ask Mycroft."

"Doesn't know anything."

"Well, I'll ask Lestrade."

"He'll point you in the direction of a filing cabinet."

"Well, I'll… But I do not twitch."

He does, but Sherlock won't say it again.


End file.
